Category Archives: Site Building
Simple Things That Increase the Usability of Your Website
A good indication of a good website is it usability, how well the visitors will interact with a certain website. A website with a very good and fluid we design can have a good usability if it’s centered into catering the basic needs of its visitor. A site that focuses more on what the users expect will yield good website usability.
A typical website design with a good usability is mainly focused on catering a broad spectrum of clients while remaining focused on its goals. For example, an online store should have every bit of information a client will need to look for in a product so that he will not revert into using other sites to find it. The site should have all these things on hand and it needs to be readily accessible to increase the site’s usability. Listed below are simple things to consider in increasing any website’s usability.
Navigation: How does a website’s navigation affect its usability? For starters, website navigation reminds your visitor what website they are on. Showing your name through the entire website will allow your visitors to remember you better. By making all of your information readily available adds to the credibility of your website. Navigation bars and link should always be clear and direct as to not to cause confusion on the visitor’s part. Proper wording and placement of navigation tools will give your website a good usability.
Familiarity: A website aimed at improving usability should always be up to date and always keeping up with the trend. By sticking to what people already know, you are always making sure that you are catering to what people are looking for website nowadays, keeping you in the mix of websites they can use for their everyday lives. Looking at other websites for inspiration is not a bad idea. By observing and determining what makes these sites more usable than other sites gives you that edge in improving your own site’s usability.
Consistency: Creating a consistent web design throughout your website will give your users a feeling of security that they are on the right track. Keeping every page in sync with the company’s colors should give your site a more consistent feel. Clients that see a page completely different from what he saw at the home page or any page will give them an idea that they are on a different site. A site that has a good usability has consistency throughout all the pages anywhere in the site.
Visual Clarity: A sign of a good website is that it gives the visitor everything that he needs to know without having so much of the distraction. For example, an online store with a minimalist design is a lot more presentable than a site that has a lot of different things attached to every side of the page. Placing buttons and links to a strategic location can help in making the visitor make a purchase straight away. Making your site an eye candy increases its usability.
Flexibility: A website that aims for a good usability should always be flexible to be accessed through any mediums possible. A site with a responsive design is a good example. It can be readily accessed without the hassle of any discrepancies when comparing it to a normal site.
Efficiency: A short description for a very efficient website that has a good usability – everything inside the site should always be one click away. A site that gives fast results is always the ones that is constantly use versus websites that takes time to process. Reducing the time of a item search inside a side with result to a good user experience giving better usability results.
Taking these things into consideration while constructing your web design will yield positive results and can greatly increase the usability of your website.
Author Bio :-
Brian Taylor is the Owner, VP/Business Development at Forix LLC, a Mobile application development firm based in Portland, OR. We specializes in mobile apps development and mobile websites development and have recently started serving clients in Chicago who looking for professional services.
The Makeup of a Compelling Website Design
The business world has changed immensely since 20 years ago, when just having a website made your company seem special. Today, if you don’t have a website (and active social media accounts, and a blog, and… you get the idea), your business looks like it’s still in the Stone Age.
Now on one hand, websites are a lot easier and more cost effective to build then they used to be. But on the other, you need to do a lot more to stand out amongst the millions of sites on the web today. And that all starts with creating a great website that is both aesthetically pleasing and beneficial to your business. Here are some things you must be sure to focus on if you want to design a compelling website that will benefit your business:
Colors
Colors are a very important part of any visual design. They are often the first thing that jumps out at a viewer’s eye, and they can say a lot about your business. If you are careful, the right color scheme can help you pass on subliminal messages that put visitors to your website in the exact mood you want them in. But if you’re not, you could be sending the wrong message that will cost your business potential clients by sending them heading for the hills.
Graphics & Images
Other elements that draw people’s eyes are compelling graphics and images. But the key word is “compelling.” Just like with colors, the wrong images can send the wrong message. Graphics and images don’t need to be ultra-fancy, but they do need to look professional, sell your company’s brand in an appropriate way, and fit perfectly into the look and feel of the website design.
Consistency
When it comes to the overall design of your website, the pages must remain consistent to each other. Obviously, you want each web page to provide different, compelling information that leads viewers to take the action that you want them to take. But there must be an underlying consistency from page to page so as not to make your website look disjointed. This starts with retaining the same color scheme from page to page, and continues with things like consistent copy and an overriding message about who your business is and what it stands for.
White Space
Simply put, your text and images sometimes need room to breathe. I know you want to maximize each page on your website in order to get your point across as well as possible, but squeezing too much information into too small a space will do a lot more harm than good. And believe it or not, just adding some white space around an important graphic or paragraph of text may make it stand out more than any highlighted background ever would.
Optimize Your Navigation
In layman’s terms, this means “make it easy for your customers to find what you want them to find.” It takes a lot of effort (and sometimes money) to drive traffic to your website. But if the people that get there become confused, that effort will be wasted as soon as they click the “x” in the top right corner. That’s why you need a plan before you build your site. If you want your potential clients to go from page A to page B, and so on, make sure that’s the most clear and obvious option you provide them with.
Author Bio:
Aileen Galsim is a blogger for Showcase Creative a UK based printing company that provides UK Custom Presentation Folders, calendars, and other printed presentation products.
Why Advanced Online Shopping Cart is Most Profitable to E-Businesses
Nowadays, more and more rising businesses and entrepreneurs are getting into the E-Commerce industry. It allows them to be connected to a whole lot of potential customers in a much larger scale. May it be small or big establishment, engaging in online business offers greater opportunities for expansion and profit especially with the use of the online shopping carts. Maintaining a stable E-Business is important, and here are some of the little things to consider.
Choosing an Online Cart with the Best Product Portfolio: As the name suggests, online carts provide features a person would have with it when he/she is doing a real-world shopping. Customers can place several items in the online shopping cart as they go around your site looking for items to possibly buy. Using an magento platform performs website design for an online cart that has more features than most shopping carts combined would help increase the possibility of the customers actually buying products from your site.
Shopping carts that have integrated credit card processing capabilities that also accepts online payment in a few seconds are just examples of a good online cart you can use to your website. It is therefore ideal to use a shopping cart that not just do the basics, but does extra little things that would make online shopping for your customers much easier.
Avoiding Shopping Cart Abandonment: As mentioned above, an advanced online shopping cart increases your profitability. But on the other hand, it also prevents shoppers from abandoning their shopping cart. Why so? One reason why some people abandon their shopping carts just before making the payment is that the checking out process was too convoluted. Some shoppers must have to go through loops just to get the payment process done. A good shopping cart like the one mentioned above can prevent it from happening thus increasing the likelihood of making a sale.
Carts with Coupons at Checkout Feature: Another feature that can be added to the web design of your E-Commerce site is the integration of a custom solution called Coupons at Checkout that automatically finds coupons available for customer’s purchase during checkout of items. With one click, discount coupons attached with the items becomes readily available to the customers without the hassle of searching for the coupons elsewhere. Shopping cart abandonment is also lessened with the use of this innovative feature.
Choose from Personalized Settings: Customization of your online store not only adds a personal and unique touch in your web design but also it increases profitability. With over a hundred templates to choose from, you can give you website a refreshed look in less than a minute.
Customization of web design may not be only for the aesthetic feature, but it can also be used for your shopping cart as well. Choosing the best customization addition to your shopping cart can be very beneficial for your E-Business. An online shopping cart that has connections to a vast database and can manage multiple products is very useful. You can also choose to add security features to your shopping cart to provide safety for your customers; as well as invoicing and e-mailing system to confirm your shopper’s recent purchases can be a great addition as well.
Having a very reliable and advanced online shopping cart can give a lot of positive effects both to you, the owner and to the customer as well. A custom solution packed with the latest features for your online shop can be a great help in having a profitable business.
Author Bio:
Forix magento is a New York based web development and magento mobile development company specializing in all things Magento.Looking for Magento developers who will make sure your eCommerce store runs hassle free? visit website for more details, Forix has it all covered. You can follow him more on Google+
Website Designing Melbourne Firms – Impressive Services For Your Online Business Plans
If you are scouting for a company which can develop a website for your business, you should be careful while taking that decision. If you are not quite sure about what all should you look into, here are some of the important tips regardless of the nature of your business.
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Browser compatibility
We have seen that different people use different systems with different OS. So the choice of the browsers too will be different. One needs to ensure that the site works well on all the browsers. So cross browser compatibility is a must for business sites.
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The outlook
The background and the design of the site have to be unique as well attractive to the masses. This will bring in more traffic to the site. So always go with the company which gives unique solutions for your websites. Make sure that they have good maintenance programs so that back up of data can be maintained for some times.
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SEO orientation
The more the visibility of the site with the search engines the larger is the possibility of getting more business. That is why SEO is very much required. Many companies are providing this service to their clients. One should see that the content on the pages are relevant and helpful to the customers. For the content too, one should have very well researched keywords. These are some of the services provided by these developing companies.
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Multimedia
One should be able to make the most of the multimedia objects available with the development company. The various flash objects and the videos available can be formatted to use productively on the web pages. Make sure that all the content and these multimedia tools are unique.
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Correct and healthy links
If you have hooked a prospective customer to your site, a broken link can be nightmarish for your business. If you thought that nothing can be worse then wait till you find a faulty link. Some of these links can take you to irrelevant sites or data which will make no sense. Such links can be frustrating and are the last thing we need on our pages.
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Navigation
The navigation through the site should be simple and easy as there will be a lot of people going through the site and a complex navigation will be a huge turn down. Keeping it simple will mean easier navigation as well as simpler maintenance.
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The feasibility
If you feel that your site is not feasible to your business, drop it. This is a business decision so as long as you do not see profit in it; you should not go for it. There are quite some expenses that you will come across in this direction. If you feel that as per the money that you are investing, you are not getting the results, you may have to retrace your steps.
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Time bound services
This is also important as when working under time lines, one should go for the company which can provide punctual services.
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Website promotion
This is important as one should always go for the firm which promotes your website well on the online domains.
Melbourne has many such companies. You can get the services of impressive website designing Melbourne companies for affordable prices.
AUTHOR’S BIO:
Paul, a businessman involved in the website designing Melbourne industry, believes that a website, over and above being appealing, has to be functionally superior too. Unless it manages to satisfy all the requirements of its users, it would never manage to be a successful one. Therefore, its content, reach, navigation and other factors should be carefully considered.
Choosing a Freelance Web Developer
When looking to have a website designed, or redesigned, it is no longer sufficient to find someone who simply has good graphic skills and a working knowledge of HTML. With the web moving forwards and mobile devices becoming increasingly important, it is necessary to find a web developer with other programming skills such as PHP, Drupal or Ajax amongst many others. Whilst it may be tempting to consider a design agency and use their pool of resources, many people find that they are not as focussed on the task in hand as an individual web developer is. Using an individual too, allows you, the client, to communicate directly with the person developing your website which will help to ensure that you get the outcome that you desire.
Services Offered
Naturally the first port of call should be to consider what you actually need from the developer. Design skills obviously are important, but it is the behind the scenes coding which is what will make your website work, or not! Your requirements will depend on the type of site that you are looking to build. A site that has an interactive forum for example may need different coding skills than an ecommerce site that takes payment direct from the site rather that using a third party such as Paypal.
You should also give serious consideration to how strongly you want to target mobile devices. Increasingly this is a large part of a site’s audience and is only likely to become more so. Therefore whilst it is not necessary to jump on every latest technology trend, it is wise to future proof your site as much as possible.
Project Portfolio
There are many ways of finding a freelance web developer; a search engine can be a good place to start although very often, word of mouth is a good way to go. If others have had a good experience with a developer, whilst it is by no means guaranteed, the chances are that you will too. Of course, if this developer doesn’t offer the type of services you want then you should not choose them.
Once you have selected a few potential developers, you should take a look at their portfolio. Don’t be distracted by their beautiful sites though if they haven’t built the type of sites that you are looking for. If you are looking to have an ecommerce site for example, then don’t take on a developer who doesn’t have those in his portfolio. He, or she, may tell you that they can do that type of work but it would likely mean that they would outsource that part which would defeat part of the object of choosing an individual developer.
Case Studies and Reviews
Once you have found a developer with a good selection of the type of site that you are looking for, you are well on the way to finding your web developer. It is worth trying to contact the owners of some of the sites in the portfolio to see what kind of experience they had with the developer.
They may also be willing to talk to you about how their new website led to more sales or a better relationships with their clients, for example. Did they have many teething problems and how helpful was the developer for support work once the site had been completed? If you find that their previous clients have been very pleased with the work and have obtained the results in their businesses that they had hoped for, the time is then right to contact the developer and commence the process of your new web development project.
Mathew Porter is an experienced Online Marketer with over 8 years industry experience in Web Design, Web Development and Ecommerce.
How to Keep Security in Mind When Building a Site from the Ground Up
Security for building a website is somewhat like constructing your own brick and frame house; it works so much better and more robustly if you’ve been implementing it from the very beginning.
For starters, you will know exactly how everything has been put together and be able to construct it in a way that keeps your site and its underlying data as secure as possible. Furthermore, by integrating security from the ground up, you can add many more customized protective features that might be harder to implement later on.
The bottom line is that digital security is more important than ever thanks to an internet full of viral, human and criminal threats to your website’s assets. Because of this, digital security is paramount and you owe it to yourself and your company to implement it as fully as possible. The alternative is to risk being hacked at any random time and seeing everything you’ve built destroyed.
Keep these essential facts in mind as you go over the site protection tips we cover below.
Choose the Right Hosting
The fundamental underlying platform behind your site is its hosting and server databases. The servers are kept by your hosting provider and they are where your entire site structure and all accompanying information are kept.
Thus, you’ll obviously want to secure them as strongly as possible as a fundamental first step in protected design.
For one thing, this means hiring a hosting provider that has a stellar reputation for security, protective options and dedicating high quality IT attention to their clients’ needs. Check around and review all the options of different services. Some basics that you should really look for include: dedicated hosting, regular LAMP updates (updates for core hosting applications Linux Apache, MySQL and PHP) and regular monitoring of your servers from multiple locations.
Make sure the hosting provider you choose is open and transparent about all their security features or lack thereof.
Build your Site in a Closed Environment
Hackers love to explore holes in weakly designed or partially unfinished code; thus, a website that’s still under construction can present a major invitation for various kinds of intrusions. In order to prevent this, make sure that your actual site development work before fully buttoned up completion is done as much as possible over a closed localized hosting environment. You can create one of your own through localhost that you’ve created on your computer or closed virtual machine through localized server software packages like WAMP or MAMP, which are free to download and fairly easy to use.
The local server environments created in MAMP and WAMP (both are the same essential program, with the first being for Mac and the second for Windows) allow for complete site development and testing without needing to connect with the open web.
Set up SSL for your Site Servers
SSL, or Secured Socket Layer, is essentially a means by which all the information transmitted between your site and other sites, users, VPNs, Local Area Networks and servers is maintained in encrypted, protected form. Doing this prevents thieves and intruders from dipping into your site’s online communications and using them for their own benefit. In short, enabling SSL is a vital step towards strong site development security.
Luckily, enabling SSL is usually very, very simple and requires only that you go into your own control panel (cpanel) that is a part of your domain hosting package and enable the SSL feature either manually through one of the server options that might be displayed there or by asking customer support to do it for your site and servers.
Configure your Web Servers for Maximum Security
Aside from setting up SSL on your servers, which are the core of your websites online presence, you can also configure them for maximum security in several other slightly more complicated ways that can nonetheless be easily implemented if you snoop around or simply speak to the IT support available from your hosting provider.
For one thing, configure your servers so that they are resistant to DOS attack. These are essentially floods of information requests fired at your site to the point of distracting it from being able to do its normal user related duties. Stopping DOS attacks is pretty easy and your sites hosting can almost certainly be set to block them reliably with a few minor configuration changes in how many information requests are allowed from a single outside source before it’s cut off.
Secondly, configure your hosting so that all of the passwords you use to access it or any internally installed CMS software (such as WordPress, for your website) is changed from its default settings to something more personalized of your own design. These changed passwords, such as those you create for your MySQL databases, hosting account itself, FTP and CMS administrative access should all be made into long phrases or character strings that contain both letters and numbers (with the letters being a mix of upper and lower case use).
Create Reporting and Evidence Protocols for Actual Hacks
This should be a well understood and regularly followed procedure for anyone who manages your site (employees, you, hired administrators). In essence, have protocols in place for documenting all evidence of intrusions or hacks; this can include saving and quarantining compromised files, odd scripts, executable files and anything else that was suspicious or part of your intrusion.
The whole lot of information collected through these good documentation procedures can be extremely useful when it comes to using digital forensics and services that provide them for the sake of identifying how you were hacked or by whom.
Set Up a Data Backup Procedure
This is one of the most crucial long term security steps you can take to protect your pages from catastrophic intrusion damage and the accompanying downtime of recovering everything through digital forensic recovery.
By setting up either an automated or manual backup system for all of your site data contained in your servers, you can at least be sure that, if a sever hack does occur, you have everything stored elsewhere for quick and easy uploading to a new server or your old host once it’s been repaired. This will minimize your downtimes during an actual hack and give you the peace of mind that comes with secure copies of important site content.
Avoid Installing too Many third Party Plugins and Site Addons
As a final basic security tips, let’s quickly cover post-construction additions to your site.
Your server scripts may be highly secure and well designed, but if they’re loaded down with less reliable third party software that wither you or someone else have installed to “improve” your site’s user experience, then those servers are much more open for hack attacks.
Avoid installing anything more than the necessary extra software on your site servers and if you have no choice than but to do so, then at least make sure any such software is kept religiously updated so that it’s latest, most secure version is working on your site servers.
About the author: Kyle Olson has written for the tech industry for many years and has developed a vast amount of knowledge on a number of topics within the field. When he’s not writing, you can find him covering LWG’s consultants
Outsourcing: What can a Business Outsource
Outsourcing has become a popular choice among many business owners worldwide and it is because of the great advantages outsourcing can offer a business.
From cutting down on operational costs and having access to greater knowledge, to streamlining businesses processes and increasing internal business productivity, outsourcing has proved to be an effecting tool for many companies and businesses.
The list of what tasks and jobs can be outsourced, is long, but below is a list of the most commonly outsourced tasks and jobs. You will find that most of these services are specialized services, requiring expertise and professional understanding in a certain, specialized field.
Information Technology (IT) Services
The outsourcing of Information Technology (IT) services has become very popular and it because of the great advantages outsourcing in this field can offer a business or company.
Having IT personal on staff can be quite expensive and, by outsourcing, it can cut costs. It also has the added benefit of having not only one or two IT employees at your disposal, but the knowledge of an entire company. Keeping up with advancing technologies are also more effective and less expensive when outsourcing.
Graphic Design
Very few companies have a Graphic Designer on staff simply because it is not an employee they have a use for on a daily basis. Having the option to outsource graphic design services, businesses have access to a lot of talented designers at competitive prices. Another added bonus is the fact that a company can look through the portfolio of a freelancer or company and decide which styles best suits them and their companies.
What also makes outsourcing in this field so popular is the fact that a company has the choice of sticking with a tried and tested graphic designer, or looking for someone with fresher and more effective design skills. This is great for when you are looking to give your business or company a ‘visual’ makeover.
Copy Writing/Blog Writer
Having a Copy Writer or Blog Writer on staff to do tasks that come around once or twice a month, will be more expensive than outsourcing the task to a professional or to a company. There are quite a lot of freelance writers out there, and a company can choose a professional that best suits their style and needs. This gives the company more freedom in terms of content by allowing it to play around with content styles.
Outsourcing these types of tasks can be quite tricky, but asking for samples and ‘testing’ the writer, will help you decide if he or she is the right person for the job.
Accounting
Not all business owners are equipped to deal with the business’s accounting and other financial needs. Outsourcing this task to another company can help to save time as well as cut down on costs. It also enables the business to have contact with a group of professionals in a field that he/she might not completely understand.
Web Developers
Web Developers and Web Development Companies are the type of professionals that specialize in the design and implementation of websites for example. A business needs only one website and website design, so outsourcing this once-off deal is much more cost effective.
Marketing
Many smaller businesses cannot afford to have marketing team on staff twenty-four-seven and thus opt to outsource marketing and marketing related tasks. It is an effective way of getting a foot in a market and industry the business owner might not fully understand. Outsourcing to professionals in this field will allow a business to have a full marketing plan without having to use its own human resources.
Outsourcing the above services does not necessarily involve using another company or business, but freelance individuals as well.
Many services, including Graphic Design, Web Development, Copy Writing and Editing, as well as Programming and Coding, are many times outsourced to freelance professionals.
Great places to find Freelancers include institutions such as LinkedIn and Elance, to name but two examples.
Always remember to do your research before outsourcing any services to a company or professional. A portfolio of samples of work can be shown by many companies and freelancers in specialized fields such as Graphic Design and Writing services.
| Author Bio: Linda McMahon is an illustrator and writer at backofficepro. Her favorite blogs subjects are outsource and Graphic Design. She loves sharing her knowledge with others. |
Magento Ecommerce: A Designer’s Guide to Suit Every Business Model
Magento eCommerce is an extremely powerful and flexible web design platform. Customisable for the unique specifications of any business the rich design elements of Magento enable technical and non-technical stakeholders to enjoy the full and dynamic flavors of an eCommerce shop.
Here we discuss the design potential of Magento and how it can be tailored to meet the constantly evolving needs of your online business.
Multiple Stores
Magento natively supports the creation and management of multiple stores within one environment. Instead of housing standalone eCommerce sites, you can create multiple, interconnected stores within one hierarchy. This enables specific stores to be setup per customer base, market or departmental requirement, which can then collaborate within the one environment.
Each store can be designed and viewed in a number of ways, with a main menu structure navigating to bespoke eCommerce stores. Providing single and multi-store eCommerce is an extremely powerful way to integrate services and staff who need websites in different languages, diverse product navigation, content types and service models.
Flexible Design
To make the most of multiple stores within the same environment, Magento lets you create rich design packages and themes around each individual area of your site. These are interchangeable and fully customisable to create the best look and feel for a given business.
Having such control over the aesthetics and functionality of a shop helps deliver optimum usability from each design package. Purpose built, each store can use its own theme, share a theme, or use a combination of themes to enhance interfacing capabilities and enrich usability for visitors
Blocks & Layouts
Embedded within each design package and theme, Magento uses structural blocks, content blocks and layouts to build each functional area of the store. This design structure helps to seamlessly build each store around flexible modules, visual and functional components.
Structural blocks build the visual parts of a Magento store, such as the header, footer and columns. Content blocks hold the information for each area, such as category lists, product descriptions and commentary. Layouts establish the connections between these blocks, mapping content blocks to structural blocks within each store.
Widgets
In the world of eCommerce, widgets are becoming increasingly important as a powerful yet simple way to add functionality. Magento has a vast collection of widgets and tools that are configurable for any eCommerce requirement.
From adding simple social media options to dynamic landing pages and promotional imagery, widgets provide high level interactivity to key elements of ecommerce navigation, providing a plethora of options to enhance the entire user experience.
Directory Structure
Built around a robust directory structure, Magento integrates all of these design elements so that they can be taken as default or customized with incredible flexibility. Easy to install and manage, the Magento directory structure offers multi-store eCommerce around interchangeable themes, blocks and layouts.
Magento provides the most advanced eCommerce design functionality on the market today and leads the market as a result. Regardless of technical acumen, internal resources or size of company, it is the perfect fit for any online business because it is customizable and affordable.
Whether building a store from scratch or enhancing an existing shopfront, Magento helps you create an environment that looks and behaves exactly as you want it. To maximize workflow efficiency and inspire an end-user community around your eCommerce environment, Magento creates the most robust and flexible single or multi-store approach to eCommerce you can find.
Author
Neil Henry has over 18yrs experience in the IT industry. Neil contributed this article on behalf of Peer 1 Hosting, who are experts in Magento ecommerce.
A Simple Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Blog-Making Your Site Load Faster
Are you frustrated by slow speeds on your WordPress blog? Are you constantly seeking to enhance the reading experience for your viewers? Milliseconds can make a world of difference in the commercial success of your blog. This guide will outline some easy ways to improve your website’s performance.
Why Does Speed Matter in Search Rankings and Conversions?
First impressions last a lifetime. Your website’s load speed is the first thing noticed by new visitors. Even with a spectacular design, many viewers will be driven away by slow load speeds without even waiting for your content to load. In addition, Google puts great emphasis on loading speeds when selecting the best search results to display. Slow loading speeds will not only drive away impatient viewers, it will also make it more difficult for searchers to find your site. Pingdom is a useful tool to analyze your site’s performance.
The Basics
Here are a few simple but essential measures to enhance your WordPress site’s speed.
1. Minimize WordPress Plugin Usage. More plugins will your slow your baseline performance. Use only what is absolutely essential.
2. Delete spam. Having thousands of spam comments built up in your database will slow your site’s performance. Delete spam regularly.
3. Delete post revisions. Post revisions will also weigh down your database and should be removed regularly. I recommend the Better Delete Revision plugin to remove revisions.
Hosting Providers: Choose Wisely
WordPress is like a car; it runs best when given the proper fuel. WordPress draws upon resources called memory or central processing unit (CPU) from its host server.
Shared accounts on hosts like HostGator, Bluehost or Dreamhost, often provide inadequate resources for your site and may hinder its overall performance. A virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server is ideal to optimize your site’s performance.
I would recommend the following providers:
- Synthesis
- Page.ly
- WP Engine
Choose Your Theme
Your theme is critical framework for enhancing your sites performance. A simple theme isn’t necessarily faster. Your theme provides a framework for delivering additional benefits to your site such as:
- Improved speed
- Built-in security enhancements
- Search engine optimization
- Beautiful designs
When choosing a theme, look at not only at the designs offered, but also at how frequently the framework is updated and at the security measures provided. The SEO features are included with your theme are also critical. To strengthen your SEO, it’s important that you can add custom titles and Meta descriptions to your articles.
Frameworks to consider include: Genesis Framework from StudioPress, Thesis, AppThemes, WooThemes or Headway Themes.
Optimize Your Database (DB)
The database is where all of your blog’s information is stored. WordPress’ database stores posts, pages, comments, settings and plugin information. The database must be read every time your page is loaded. An overloaded database takes longer to find and load. It is critical to optimize your database’s performance. The WP-DBManager is a useful tool that allows you to back up, restore, repair and optimize your database.
When you install WP-DBManager, you will see a database option in the menu on the left. First, backup the database using the Backup DB submenu. Next, repair the database using the Repair DB submenu. Finally, optimize the database with the Optimize DB submenu. To avoid repeating these tasks manually, you can also schedule automatic database backup, repair, and optimization using DB Options submenu. I backup my database daily, optimize it every 3rd day, and repair it weekly.
Optimize Your Images for Maximum Loading Time
Selecting the appropriate image types is vital. For simple images such as illustrations or artwork use an 8-bit PNG. These smaller files will load faster. For complex images with many colors, use JPG or 24-bit PNG files. Image editors such as Paint.net, GIMP, or Photoshop may be used to save images in these formats, depending upon the image’s complexity. Proper image formatting will reduce your image sizes and allow for faster loading speeds.
A Simple Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Blog
Caching is analogous to taking a photograph of your information at a given time without reading your entire database. WordPress goes through a complicated process to load all of your information every time your page is loaded. If you use a caching plugin, this process is simplified: your content is loaded directly from cache without being generated anew every time your page is loaded. W3 Total Cache is a simple and effective caching plugin. For most users, I recommend using W3 Total Cache’s default settings, though advanced users may wants to make adjustments.
Consider Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) helps to deliver all of your site’s content, images, CSS, and JavaScript files from their respective locations around the world. Content is normally served from the location closest to your visitor. For a European visitor, content is delivered through a European server, for example. Using a CDN will minimize bandwidth and improve loading speeds. Most hosting providers will provide a free CDN.
The simple measures above should improve your blog’s performance. Please let me know if you have feedback or other suggestions.
Gerrid Smith is alaw firm SEO expert based in Redding, CA. As the owner of a leading search marketing firm, he enjoys staying up to date on all the changes that happen with Google each year. Visit his website or follow him onTwitter.
What You Need To Check While Choosing the Web Designers for Your Business
When it is about the web world, a website is considered the face of a business and it plays a vital role in building the image of a company. With a poorly developed website you are at the risk of hampering the image and thereby driving the potential clients away. Therefore while looking for the web designers for their company the business houses always prefer to go for skilled, experienced and creative designers who by creating some excellent websites are able to draw a large number of traffic and thus get huge success in business.
While choosing a web designer for your business you need to first know the particular type of website you want for your business and what would be your expectation from that website. You can take recommendations from colleagues or friends and go for a website design company that has a good reputation in the market and is able to provide both short term and long term maintenance solutions.
Another way to find a good website designer would be going through the review sites of various website designing companies. You will get plenty of reviews which will help you to pick up the right designer for your purpose.
Next important thing to check would be the portfolio of the website designer. Viewing the portfolio you can understand if they have that individuality which is very much needed to create unique designing for your site as per the circumstances and requirements. A company with a minimum of 20 jobs in their portfolio is likely to produce good results. It is equally vital to check out their client’s website to understand that it is not a fake one.
After deciding to hire a company, you need to explain your requirements in detail by setting up a meeting with them. There can be various pros and cons in the contract as well as payment mode, by exchanging ideas with the designer you can clear it all. To get the job completed within a fixed time period it is better to set a deadline. Above all, sign a contract written with all terms and conditions and payment details.
When you choose a talented and reputed web designer for your site you can expect to get a customized website which will enhance the visibility and improve your business presence as well. Since there is a huge demand of web designers out there, a considerable number of web designing companies are providing services. Some of them have the best of web designers who are capable enough to design the best site for your business. With a good web design services a notable improvement is assured in visibility and business presence.
Selecting an innovative, skilled and experienced web designer is necessary because your website is the true representation of your business and it will draw traffic. On the other way, with an unimpressive and inappropriate website that cannot serve your purpose, traffic will get driven away from your site. While choosing from the web designers you can compare and select the one who can provide you a quick, inexpensive and effective service. Above all, an experienced and professional web designer can understand your needs well and find out the best design that will be able to catch the attention of more and more visitors, create an interest in them and they will stop by your website to know about your products and services. This will increase your business exposure and thereby the sales and profit.
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Author Bio: Mike Anderson is an experienced web designer who has written many articles and blogs on web designing and graphic designing. In this article she is providing some valuable information to the readers on what you need to check while choosing the web designers for your business.
